Munich-based 3D indoor mapping and navigation startup NavVis has raised a €7.5 million Series B round of funding as it readies the launch of its smartphone indoor navigation app.

The investment was led by German VC Target Partners, with participation from existing investors MIG Fonds, and BayBG Bayerische Beteiligungsgesellschaft, as well as new investor Don Dodge, Developer Evangelist at Google.

The company, born out of research at the Technical University of Munich, has developed imaging tech to enable indoor navigation sans WiFi or GPS or even beacon technology.

Instead, via its patent-pending 3D mapping trolley — which consists of a mobile scanner equipped with lasers and cameras — NavVis’ technology works by taking a series of high definition and geo stamped images of an indoor area and using this as the basis of a corresponding 3D map. That map can then be used to view an area virtually (similar to Google Streetview) or to navigate the area in-person simply by utilising a smartphone’s camera and corresponding NavVis app.

NavVis’s customers are said to be high profile international companies from the automotive, insurance, retail, transportation and logistics sectors, while the company reckons that the global market for its tech is worth “billions”.

In a statement, Felix Reinshagen, NavVis co-founder and CEO, says: “Up to this point, hardly any indoor spaces, such as factories, office buildings, event venues, shopping centers or trade fair halls, have been digitally captured.”

Along with indoor navigation, specific use-cases for NavVis’ tech span numerous location-based services in buildings, from logistics, repairs and maintenance work through to facility management and seamless navigation.

Meanwhile, the company says that the new funding will be used to “ramp up production, expand sales activities in Germany and other major global markets, such as China, Japan, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and the USA, and to further develop NavVis’s unique technology.”